With one day to explore Trinidad we obviously needed to restrain ourselves a little. We had contacted a couple of tour operators but it soon became clear that these guys really wanted to sell us a full-day package as opposed to try to understand and cater for what we were really interested in. So we went for the rent-a-car option instead. That car was quite a wreck, it had a semi-flat tyre to start with and one of the door handles broke off 5 minutes after hand-over (...it was super-glued to the door to keep the impression that it wasn't actually broken). Not exactly a great start.
The traffic on the island turned out to be a lot more busy than we expected. Also, there were hardly any motorbikes or bicycles. We couldn't quite figure out why, until we refilled the tank of the car before returning it. Thanks to the oil and gas based economy of Trinidad and Tobago, the litre of petrol only costs about the 30 Euro cents, which means that everybody seems to be going everywhere by car. With this in mind, a couple of observations we made started making more sense:
- The hotel offered a shuttle bus from the hotel to a nearby mall, which was no more than a 10min walk away. At that mall, the shuttle bus made two - instead of one - stops. One at the food court, the other at the restaurants. Both were a mere 2 minute walk from each other.
- Very high obesity rates, particularly among women (we also read this in an article in the local paper over breakfast). To be fair this also has to do with the diet. In Colombia, for example, we could saw lots of exotic fruits everywhere but in Trinidad the options were a lot more limited for some reason :o(
The first place we visited was Yerette, also known as the home of the hummingbird. It is run by a friendly couple, Theo and Gloria, who open the doors of their home and garden in the lush hills outside Trinidad's capital Port of Spain to visitors in order to share knowledge and stories about the dozen or so different hummingbird species that live around there.
During the winter, we can occasionally see one or sometimes two hummingbirds in our garden in Santiago (we think they are colibri coruscans). But at Yerette we were constantly surrounded by so many of the birds in different sizes and colours that it was impossible to keep track of them. Why they are visiting this place is hard to tell. Probably because the forest and flowery gardens make a good habitat. And it may also help that Theo attracts them with feeders filled with "artificial nectar" (... i.e. 25% sugar solution). Apparently 90% of their diet consists of nectar, which probably explains why they are so hyperactive and impossible to capture in a photograph by amateurs like us.
These guys are fascinating and beautiful little creatures, and it is nice to see someone with a passion for them found an interesting and educational way of sharing his enthusiasm with others.
Our second destination was located at the eastern coast of the island, about a 50km drive from our hotel. There, at Matura Beach, is one of the places where Leatherback sea turtles come to shore to lay their eggs and March to August is the season when this happens. Leatherbacks enjoy protection in Trinidad since the 1990s, although this protection is limited to the land. That they get killed in fishing nets and die from eating the plastic rubbish that gets washed into the sea is not addressed in any way. But there are now a couple of Nature Conservation Organisations, like Nature Seekers, who dedicate themselves to monitoring the turtles and organising guided walks on the beach for nature lovers like us.
Having arrived late in the season, our expectations weren't too high and when we purchased the permit and arranged the guide we were repeatedly told that we are probably not going to see very much. But we took our chances and would have settled for a romantic walk on a tropical beach on a moonless and starry night (with the subtle lights of the oil rigs in the distance).
Our guide pointed out plenty of evidence of turtle activity on the beach, tracks of hatchlings that must have made their way earlier that day to the sea, tracks of another hatchling that was less lucky and must have been intercepted by a crab (those flipper tracks ended in a hole on the beach as opposed to in the water), even a couple of disguised nests and tracks of mature turtles that must have arrived the previous night.
And then, as luck would have it, we bumped into one lady leatherback who was in the middle of digging a hole prior to placing her eggs.
We watched in awe how this massive turtle went through this ritual, laying the eggs, then covering them up, then disguising the nest, before returning to the sea.
And as if this wasn't enough, we bumped into a second turtle on the way back. This one must have come to shore very shortly after we had first walked along that stretch of the beach on the way out. We decided to leave it in peace, though, and let it get on with her business in the privacy that the darkness of the night offered.
Back at the starting point of our beach excursion, the rangers from the Forestry Service, who are in charge of administering the permits for the nightly visits, showed us a few hatchlings that they had picked up on the beach earlier in the afternoon.
It was a bit sad to see them continuing to struggle with their flippers in the hope that this would eventually get them to the (slighly safer) sea, even though they were trapped in a plastic container. But the rangers promised us that they would release them as soon as we were gone...
The excitement of the day was not over at that advanced stage of the night, we still had to change the dodgy tyre of the rented car at 23:30 in the-middle-of-nowhere.
But eventually we made it back and are happy to report that Patricia managed to attend the meeting (which was the purpose of the whole trip!) on Saturday. Mission accomplished... q-:
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